About SWASH+
A child goes to school. She dreads it for reasons no child should have to worry about: the school toilets are filthy and there is no water for drinking or washing hands. This scenario is all too common and addressing these problems effectively in resource-strapped countries can be difficult, not solely due to a lack of resources but to programs that are not well designed and implemented. The SWASH+ projects in Kenya and Central America provide two different experiences of trying to design and implement school water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects effectively and sustainably while studying the effects of school WASH, or its absence, on children.
SWASH+ Kenya was developed from a pilot initiative funded by the Coca Cola Africa Foundation. The initiative began in 2005, when the Millennium Water Alliance, CARE, Water.org (formerly Water Partners International), and Kenya-based SANA implemented a school and community WASH project. SWASH+ Kenya’s current partners are CARE, Emory University’s Center for Global Safe Water, Water.org, and the Kenya Water and Health Organisation. It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Water Challenge.
SWASH+ Central America, launched in early 2008 and based in part upon SWASH+ Kenya, is the first regional program of the Millennium Water Alliance (MWA), a group of 11 US-based NGOs that work in the WASH sector. The project is being implemented in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, by MWA partners CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and Water For People. The project is coordinated by the Millennium Water Program Secretariat, which is hosted by Water For People in the Regional Office for Central America in Honduras. It is funded by each partner, Global Water Challenge, UNICEF, ITT Corporation, and other key donors including national and local municipal governments.
School WASH projects are of course, not new and a lot is already known about them. There are projects all over the world with some excellent websites devoted to providing resources and information about school WASH. The SWASH+ projects’ aim then is to provide specific examples of implementation, out of which some general lessons can be identified. SWASH+ Kenya, an applied research project, is also making available some controlled studies to inform the greater body of knowledge about school WASH programming as the number of controlled studies that exist on this topic is relatively small.